Malaria Tourney

So far, I've spent a few days of Ramadan in Doundodji not fasting, and when the lunch bowl came looking like this:

... I wished I was fasting. So that's the plan as of tomorrow, or I'll be pretending to fast and eating delicious America snacks in my room. Anything to avoid the greasy rice bowl with gelatinous cow parts and dried fish hidden inside. Yuck.

In other news, all of team Linguere has spent the last week visiting each of our villages to do presentations, skits, and demonstrations on malaria prevention. All in all, over the course of 4 days, we visited 11 villages and spoke to about 1300 people. Every village had a great turnout and everyone was enthusiastic about the whole thing. We also had a really fun time making total fools of ourselves... for entertainment and education value of course.

Mboula - Emily talking about mosquito nets

back-of-the-truck mango eating by Mac

Ngaraff - Making neem lotion

Doundodji - there was dancing!

Doundodji - Abby and my counterpart's little sister got the crowd going

Doundodji - a little theatre by Ann Marie and Justin

Mac and I perfected our Pulaar squat and taught the crowd that drinking too much milk may give you gas, but it sure doesn't cause malaria.

Doundodji - the crowd under a neem tree

Linguere - Abby, Ann Marie, and Emily even did a radio show to talk about our project.

Xhol Xhol - Team Linguere with our Peace Corps driver/helper extraordinaire, Tidiane

Xhol Xhol - record attendance

Neem lotion - it may look delicious, but don't eat it...

Between stops, Justin was our tour guide

Diagely - the men were front and center

Diagely - Abby took the stage between skits dressed as a mosquito caught up in a net.

Diagely - Kim ran the show in Pulaar.

...then the storm rolled in

and we celebrated the coming of the rains

did a rain dance

and called it a day.

Goodbye IST, hello Ramadan

In-service training (IST) was full of lots of informative sessions, some not-so informative sessions, and a ton of time spent with all my fellow March staigaires. I failed miserably at documenting the whole thing, but my lovely friend LaRocha did an excellent job, so instead of stealing her photos, I'll direct you to her blog: http://thissenegaleselife.blogspot.com/.

After 2 weeks of IST, I headed to Dakar for 3 days. I had a few med appointments (don't worry, no infectious tropical diseases) and some more time with some of my favorite people. I ate delicious ice cream, thai food and pizza, went to Casino, a real live grocery store with air conditioning and aisles, and enjoyed the luxury of the climate-controlled med hut with hot showers and comfy beds.

4 of us from Linguere got back yesterday afternoon just before 5 after a 6-hour ride in a 7-places car. Our month 8 (Islam's month 9) welcomed us with lots of hungry people. Ramadan, bismillah. If you're interested, here's an article about Ramadan: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/practices/ramadan_1.shtml. If not, the basic idea is this: During the whole month, one lunar cycle, Muslims fast from the first prayer of the day until the main evening prayer around 7:30. It's sort of like lent- people also refrain from sinful behavior and read the Koran as much as possible.

Lots of volunteers fast with their families; I've decided to give it a try, but I'm not in it for the long haul. My older sister is pregnant and not fasting, so I'm counting on her to cook us delicious lunch every day. I'm headed back to the village this afternoon. We'll see how it goes.

Real live work and other notable events

Local highs have fallen below the skin-scorching 130 degrees of my first month at site, and I now have some semblance of an ability to communicate with the people around me beyond semi-coherent mumbles intended to resemble some sort of appropriate responses to questions. The result: I'm actually doing work. Yay!

My garden has somehow survived the heat and is growing nicely. I've got moringa trees growing out of my ears (they're fabulous miracle trees: http://www.moringanews.org/moringa_en.html, http://www.pcsenegal.org/index.php?page=food_security/moringa.html), zillions of eggplants, tomatoes, cucumber, turnip, carrot, okra, mint, and a few other kinds of trees. Now, the trick will be for all these lovely lush happy plants to survive the onslaught of hungry creepy crawlies that will come with the rains.

The garden: freshly dug bed, veggie nursery, and eggplants

Moringa!

I went to a nearby village with a couple of the other fabulous Linguere volunteers to teach them how to make neem lotion, an easy, relatively cheap (about 50-75 cents per liter) mosquito repellant. It's made with neem tree leaves, water, soap, and oil. I plan to do a neem lotion teaching marathon in my village for the rainy season when mosquitoes show up, but that's still to come...

Doundodji has 6 womens' groups, each of which has a garden where they grow vegetables to eat and sell (thanks to the volunteer before me, Brian). I met with all the groups to get acquainted and find out what kinds of activities they want to do. Many of the women are motivated and interested in my work, which is a big help. The gardens all have good things going for them, but definitely have room for improvement- that's where I come in.

There was a vaccination and malnutrition campaign in town a couple weeks ago. I accompanied our local ASC (agent de sante communitaire), matron, and health relais for a few busy days of vaccinating against polio, giving vitamin A supplements and anti-parasitics, and measuring brachial circumferences of kids from 7 months to 5 years. We first did a tour of Doundodji, then took to small neighboring villages. I got a better sense of the area and the state of affairs in terms of health. There's a lot of work to be done.

Aside from all the business, all of us from Linguere along with 80 or 100 other Senegal PC volunteers trekked down to the southeast corner of the country, Kedougou, for a 4th of July blowout. Personally, I took a car. While not particularly comfortable, reliable, or speedy, it did the job. Some other Linguerians made an epic trek on their bikes over the course of a week. Epic is the key word. It's beautiful, lush, and tropical down there- they have hippos, monkeys, rivers, waterfalls, and green loveliness as far as the eye can see. Just as a reminder, in Linguere, we have sand, camels, thorny bushes, cows, more sand, and (hallelujah!) yogurt.

The Gambia River

There were hippos

...lots of hippos

We had a picnic by the river on our way down to Kedougou

Lazy days in Kedougou

Dindifello

The lovely waterfall at Dindifello

I'm headed back to Thies tomorrow morning for in-service training, 2 weeks back at the cushy training center to cram lots of useful information into my brain before coming back to implement my master plans of curing AIDS, malaria, malnutrition, lack of education, deforestation, drought, and all else that ails the nation.

Bismillah!

I had a grand welcome to Doundodji, complete with all the fanfare. There was chanting, singing, speeches, dancing, an MC, hundreds of kids, money being thrown... I couldn't have asked for more. Then village life proceeded, in an extremely hot and slow manner.

I've gotten settled in my little hut and am adjusting to the daily schedule:
4:50-5:00 AM: try to ignore call to prayer.
5:00-5:30 AM: fall asleep temporarily, if no dogs, donkeys, camels, chickens, or children happen to be disturbed at the time.
5:30-6:30 AM: try to ignore loud singing
6:30 AM: roll out of bed just as the singing finally stops.
6:50 AM: go for run or bike ride, scare camels, goats, sheep, and Pulaars with the unusual sight of a white person moving fast.
8:00-9:00 AM: shower, breakfast (loaf of delicious village bread & tea), water garden
9:00-11:00 AM: Morning activity*
11:00 AM-1:30 PM: lay in a pool of sweat/sit with family in a pool of sweat, study/read/chat
1:30 PM: eat lunch- rice with fish and veggies or rice and beans and dried fish and peanuts, or rice and sauce, or rice and veggies... you get the idea
2:00-5:00 PM: lay in a pool of sweat/sit with family in a pool of sweat, study/read/chat, drink tea
5:00-7:00 PM: Afternoon activity*, water garden
7:00 PM: shower, putz around in hut
8:00 PM: emerge from hut equipped with a book, my chair, and almighty headlamp.
8:00-9:00 PM: sit with family, chat/read, talk about how bright my headlamp is, try to avoid gigantic scorpions
9:00 PM (or 9:30 or 10:00...): eat dinner- ground millet with bean sauce or ground millet with peanut sauce or ground millet with milk...
9:30 or 10:00 PM: go to bed
10:00 PM-4:50 AM: sleep/sweat/listen to the nightly music of Doundodji (singing, chickens, kids, the mouse eating something in my room or crawling up and down my mosquito net, donkeys, camels- on special occasions, dogs, mystery creatures)

*morning and afternoon activities include: working in the garden, chatting, watching whatever happens to be going on around the compound, strolling around town and greeting people, visiting the neighbors, sweating.

It might sound hot and boring, but it's actually quite nice in the village and the people are lovely. I still can't understand most of what they say, but it's coming along and I'm doing a lot of smiling and nodding.

Hut, pre-painting

hut, post-painting and decoration

shower/toilet/frog habitat

hut, bathroom, and my little baby baobab tree

The work crew at my garden filling tree sacks

hammin' it up

Camels!

Sworn In

We finished up training in style by making beignets with moringa for our host families in Mboro then PC threw a fabulous party for them at the training center. There were speeches, musicians, delicious food, and lots of dancing. Swearing in was the next day in Dakar- we all got dressed in our lovely new Senegalese outfits and headed to the Ambassador's house for a ceremony and hors d'oeuvres on the lawn.

 Makin' beignets

 Host family reception

 Fancy new outfit... with my host sister Kine

 Dancing!

 Swearing in  with our country director Chris Hedrick

Linguere volunteers 

Chatting with the Ambassador

I'm getting installed in my village this afternoon- the PC car will drop me and my gigantic pile of stuff off at my little hut... and leave me to fend for myself. Our country director has challenged us to spend 5 weeks without staying a night at one of the 13(?) regional houses. We can also look forward to a party at his house if we succeed... I'll be there. Until then, I'll be in my village without electricity save for the occasional day trip to our apartment in Linguere. The thermometer says 115, here goes...

Demystified

Lots of things have been happening...

With much fanfare, including blindfolds and being led around on a giant map of Senegal, I got my permanent site assignment. In about a month, I'll be moving to a little village called Doundodji near Linguere in the Louga region. It's the desert and its gosh darn hot, but I'm from New Mexico so it's all gonna be ok.

I took a short trip to my training village, got a strange virus that made my head feel like it was going to explode, then took another little trip to the cushy med hut in Dakar. After 2 nights there with lots of sleeping and pain killers, I was back to normal in time to visit my future home.

For what is referred to here as volunteer visit or demystification, I took a 6-hour car ride up to Doundodji with the 5 other trainees going to nearby villages. I had a 4-day visit with my ancienne Brian (the volunteer I'm replacing) and got oriented with all the latest and greatest of Doundodji. We toured around the 6 quartiers, did some meeting and greeting, visited 7 local gardens, held events to teach women's groups how to make mosquito repellent and plant trees, did a village cleanup, went running at sunrise, and slept under the stars. Also included in our activities were: hours and hours of sitting in any available shade which was still 90 or 100 degrees in the afternoons, Brian killing a mouse and a scorpion in his hut and carrying rocks to fend off wild dogs on our runs, waiting 2 hours after meetings were supposed to start for people to show up, making a toddler burst into a terrified crying fit at the mere sight of me, and best of all listening to the calls to prayer. While my site is lovely, it has one little problem - a mosque right outside my compound:

This is a view across my family's compound from my little yard. Allow me to direct your attention to the loudspeakers pointed directly at me and to note that the first of five daily calls to prayer is at 5:30 AM followed by no less than 45 minutes of singing, also over the speakers. I will be using earplugs.

I have a brand new hut with a little yard and my very own shower/toilet (a hole with walls around it). I really love my little hut and have grand plans for interior decoration and establishing homeyness. If you block out the sounds of children tormenting chickens, donkeys braying, dogs barking, and mosque-related noises, it really is lovely to sleep out under the stars. The sunrises are also beautiful and have a very "National Geographic" quality to them. All in all, I'm happy with my site and it was a real gift to be able to spend a week with Brian getting oriented.

 The short-lived scorpion visitor

 My brand new hutsky.

I had to add this picture too - one of the neighbors' little girls strolled into the compound while everyone was sitting around shelling and sorting peanuts one afternoon in this little getup. She was completely adorable, utterly absurd, oblivious to the humor, and blankly stared at everyone as they rolled laughing. I told her she looked beautiful, which was also received with a blank stare.

We got back to the training center yesterday, spent a lovely day in Dakar today touring all the important sites- PC offices, downtown, an ice cream shop (!!?!??!?!!!), and the America club for lunch and lounging by the pool. It was beautiful. 

Tomorrow it's back to training villages for a week.

Hot cabbage and a funeral

Village life has evolved over the last two weeks – we took two trips to the beach and discovered where to buy fresh fruit, ice cream, and most importantly… cold beer. It’s no easy task to learn a new language and culture and lots of tech stuff, but things are coming along. 

I returned to Mboro, had a peaceful dinner, a night filled with chanting broadcast from the nearby mosque, animal noises, and some sleep. In the morning upon my arrival at language class, I discovered that the director of the school where we built our garden had died that morning. So, instead of a productive day of planting and learning, we went shopping at the market for skirts and scarves and drove on over to the funeral. The men and women were in separate groups under a tent in the front yard, prayers were being done in the side yard, the widow was in the house having her braids taken out, the body had been taken to Touba for burial, and food was being carted in every direction. Having never met the guy, it was awkward… we called it an opportunity for cultural exchange and went on our merry way. While I tried to have sympathy for the people who were affected, I also became increasingly concerned about the smell growing in my room. The school being closed, we couldn’t plant the vegetables we’d brought… most were fine, the hot cabbage was not. We finally got the saggy plants in the ground after about a week when we’d tracked down the guard and the key.

Gardening was a refreshing break from all the language sessions. With the help of some neighborhood kids, we planted 2 kinds of eggplant, lettuce, bissap, okra, cucumber, peppers, carrots, turnips, moringa, lucaena, cashew, and of course cabbage. 

 Decked out for the funeral

Our garden after planting.

During the second week, we ate exclusively intestines for dinner. On the first night of said week, the power was out and I began merrily eating until the light caught something that looked like a saggy sheet of rubber being stretched up out of the depths of the rice. I good-naturedly ate a bite when it was thrown in my section of the bowl, but upon swallowing, immediately lost my appetite, told my family I was full, and retired for the night. On the subsequent nights, we had power and I ate around all the suspicious wrinkly chunks. 

Some family dynamics were clarified, I discovered 4 new siblings, one of whom I thought was my niece. The ages of my host siblings range from 17 to 40-something. I’m learning more every day. 

Back at the center, we’ve had lots of tech sessions, and our permanent sites will be announced tomorrow! With a camera crew present…